They say there ain’t no rest for the wicked. I say, there’s ain’t no rest for the farmer! When Shuye arrived with the bad news, we had no choice but to cut the vacation short, pack up, and leave immediately. My bear-like Farm Guide looked extremely worried as he flew us back, and I had to ask him to slow down several times.

“Oh, I don’t feel so good,” I said as I leaned against Fengying after we landed. “I think I left my stomach somewhere up in the sky.”

“I’m sorry, was I flying too fast?” asked Shuye.

“It’s fine… I just need a minute.” I waited until I felt better, then said, “All right, show me.”

They led me to the second field where the corn was already waist high.

“This morning when we went to water the plants, we saw that,” said Kharli.

“That” was lightning that was dancing across a small patch of land, illuminating the area with a bright white light. It crackled and flashed menacingly, but as we walked towards it, it started to dim until, by the time we reached it, the lightning had disappeared.

“Interesting,” I said.

The entire household had turned out to watch this development, and everyone seemed relieved when the lightning died down by itself.

“There’s nothing more to see here, why don’t we all go back to the house for lunch? I’m sure we're all hungry,” I said.

They obediently turned around and walked back to the house while I took a moment to inspect the damage. Thankfully, only a small portion of the corn crop had burned down. I knelt down and touched the part of the ground where lightning had struck. The plants had been reduced to ashes, and the soil was wet and slightly warm. I got out a spade and dug around until I found what I was looking for.

[Lightning Fang:

A jagged, glassy rock formed after a lightning strike. It was created when intense heat from a lightning bolt melted the silica in soil or sand and then cooled rapidly.

Can be added to an arrowhead for an additional effect. One use.]

It wasn’t much, but it would serve as a consolation prize for losing part of the harvest.

A Lightning Fang wasn’t very useful in Adventure Incarnate, so I didn’t have any in my inventory because GodIAm hadn’t bothered with it. All the item did was to add an electric shock effect to an arrow, which gave it a small chance of stunning the enemy.

“What’s that?” asked Shuye.

I explained the Lightning Fang’s use to him, and he asked me to demonstrate it for him, which I promised to do when I had free time.

“Your apprentices told me that there was a thunderstorm last night. I’m not surprised that lightning struck some of the crops, but I don’t understand why the lightning behaved that way,” he said.

“Yes, that was weird, wasn’t it?” I couldn’t explain it to him. In Adventure Incarnate, there were several harmless visual bugs, and the one where lightning didn’t disappear immediately after striking a farm was pretty common. That was probably what happened here. “Well, at least it didn’t burn down more of the crops.”

This was all my fault. I had forgotten that summer was the season of thunderstorms, and I hadn’t put any lightning rods down. I’ll place them around the farm later today.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Seeing that everything was now fine, Shuye said his goodbyes as I went back for lunch. He always made himself scarce whenever it was meal time, since that was considered courteous behavior here for cultivators and clan members who abstained from eating human food.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

“I look forward to it.”

***

The next day, Shuye appeared after I finished my morning chores, and I agreed to show him how the Lightning Fang worked.

“Um, it’s sort of weird,” I said.

“Everything about you is like that,” he said. He was wearing his usual brown pants and robe, and his hair was as shaggy as ever.

“Let’s walk a little bit away from the farm.”

“Is this going to be dangerous?”

“Nah.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll just shoot a tree or something,” I said. “How is your wife? Has she eaten the petals from the five Dusk Dandelions yet?”

“She has. No results yet.”

“I hope it works.”

“I almost forgot!” Shuye got a cloth sachet from his pocket and handed it to me. “Dusk Dandelions seeds.”

The seeds looked like tiny grains of black rice, and they had a faint silver glow around them.

“Great! If the cure works, then I’ll use them when it’s planting season.” Though I couldn’t be 100% certain that the Dusk Dandelions would be effective, the fact that the System recommended them meant that there was a good chance it would work. I poured out half of the seeds and gave the sachet back to Shuye. “Why don’t you try planting some of these yourself?”

“You don’t mind if I take some of them?”

“It’s better for me if I’m not the sole source of Dusk Dandelions. In fact, we should probably distribute the seeds to your clan members when we have more,” I said.

“That’s very generous of you,” he said.

“Generous? Wait, are you assuming that I did this for free? No way! I’m expecting a big reward if your wife gets pregnant.” I laughed at his thunderstruck expression. “I’m just kidding.”

“I’ll owe you a favor if it works,” said Shuye.

“No, no, I was just kidding.”

He ignored my protests. When we reached a small clearing, I said that it was far enough.

Taking out the Lightning Fang and a regular arrow from my inventory, I rubbed the lightning-infused stone on the arrowhead. Electricity arched and the stone crumbled to dust. I held up the arrow for Shuye to see.

“Now some of the lightning’s power has been transferred to this arrow. I’ll just shoot that tree, okay?” I pointed at a nearby oak tree that was a good distance from the other trees.

“Be careful.”

Without further ado, I notched an arrow and struck the target in the middle of the trunk.

BOOM!

I was unprepared for the explosion that caused a shockwave that shook the ground and the loud boom that reverberated through the area. The tree was thrown into the air, its leaves and branches flying everywhere. The trunk was split into many pieces by the force of the blast.

Shuye stepped in front of me, a near-invisible shield snapping in place around both of us, protecting us from the bits of wood flying in all directions. I didn’t know he could do that. It was a bit late, but I activated Mr. Bear’s [Defense Mode].

“Are you hurt?” asked Shuye when it was all over.

The destruction was complete. What was once a green and vibrant tree was now nothing more than a pile of wood chips. The ground around the tree was covered in splinters, torn bits of leaves, and other debris. Even the roots were destroyed, leaving nothing more than a gaping hole in the ground.

“I’m fine. Um, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Lightning arrows aren’t supposed to be that powerful.” I looked around me in awe at the devastation.

Shuye shook his head and gave me a look of disappointment. “Divine lightning is the most powerful force on earth. I thought you knew.”

“Huh? Wouldn’t earth-type cultivators easily counter lightning?” That was the rule in the game.

My Farm Guide sighed. “They can’t do that. No one can avoid divine lightning.”

His use of the word “divine” clued me in. I was thinking of “lightning” as simply a form of electricity, but in this world where the clans believed in manifest gods, a heavenly thunderbolt was more than just the movement of charged particles. It was something divine.

That was good to know. In the future, when I had the time to train crafting, I would test making lightning-type items since I now knew that they were especially useful. Or did that only apply to items that were made naturally by lightning during a thunderstorm? I sensed that there was a lot of experimenting with different kinds of elemental magic in my future.

“My bad. I didn’t realize it would be that strong.” I did my best to give him an apologetic look while internally jubilant at my discovery. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have wasted my Lightning Fang on a tree.”

“Please be more careful next time.”

“I definitely will.” Next time, I would have Mr. Bear at the ready.

“I think the people from your household are coming to see what the commotion was about,” said Shuye as we both heard the sound of people approaching.

This was going to be difficult to explain.